good morning, 2023.

Good morning, 2023.

I finished twenty twenty-two with a whirlwind last few weeks of travel with some of my family and though I didn’t have as much time for reflection as I have in the past around NYE because of that, the trip did reflect back something beautiful for me to hold onto for the start of our new Gregorian calendar year.

When I first started traveling by myself, it was a huge relief to be in these new cities where I didn’t have to be paying attention to a huge disconnect at my life at the time: that what I want to do with my time/life isn’t how people around me want to spend their time/life. And how much internal distress that used to cause me because many of the relationships I had then, are relationships I still have now and I always wanted that to be true. I didn’t want to travel to start over and leave a life behind.

Rather it was as if these new countries were portals into how my life could be if I was more aligned with myself, if I could risk confrontation, if I could whittle through the projections, pressures, and expectations of others to hear my own voice. My time in these places was practice for how I could exist in the ebbs and flows of my own energy and desires and curiosities. Because I never wanted to never come back to these people in my life.

What I wanted was to be as gentle to myself, and romantic with my life, as I was on those couple week solo trips during the rest of the weeks of my life. What I realized during this end of 2022 trip that I would have done slightly differently on my own, is that I have cultivated what I used to only get in my solo travels, into my day to day life. Inklings of this truth have been reflected in my developing and newer friendships from my last homes, Seattle and now Cambridge, but the desire to return home never used to come as it does now. I didn’t use to have cherished time to twirl around in my kitchen while trying new recipes, or the ability to live at the speed of wherever my two feet can take me. It doesn’t all fit in a caption here but beautiful true things don’t always have to be reduced to words. But I wonder what will this year bring now that I know this new thing to be true.